The London borough of Lambeth has seen rapid change in recent years with a series of redevelopments that have transformed the borough, cementing it as one of the capital’s most exciting places to live, work and play.

But Lambeth has always been one of the most open and vibrant parts of London, made up of intersecting, diverse communities, each of which has breathed new life into its streets. It is high time that Lambeth had a voice to reflect its diversity.

With chancellor Philip Hammond apparently having scrapped the review into fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), now is the time for a serious and co-ordinated campaign in the Labour Party and in the country against the scourge of gambling addiction.

In many ways, Britain has never been so divided. It’s not just the vote on Brexit that has split the nation. There are other more deep-rooted problems.

Unable to get on the housing ladder and often with limited job prospects, many young people feel their lives are a world away from financial security of those who went before them.

As well as the intergenerational chasm, a divide is opening up between the three million EU citizens living here who fear what the future might hold for them and the rest of the UK’s citizens.

And, there is the alarming gap that appears to be opening up between some ethnic minority communities and the authorities and the police.

This was seen with the anger over the shambolic response of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council to the Grenfell Tower disaster and the unrest in East London following the death of Rashan Charles after he was pursued and apprehended by police.

As someone who was welcomed when I came to England as a teenager and a Kurdish refugee from Turkey, these changes are worrying. There is a risk these divisions will deepen unless we act.

The fabric of our society is not torn apart, but it is badly damaged. We need action to fix that and make sure we heal these divisions to make Britain safer and more inclusive.

That work should start with the youngest. Too many children are still living in poverty in a country where the richest are so wealthy they can afford to leave multi-million pound mansions in London empty.

According to Barnardo’s, there are 3.7 million children living in poverty in the UK – a shocking figure by any standards.

Around 400 Sure Start centres, places that gave children such a great start in life, have shut under the Conservatives. An injection of £500 million in early intervention funds promised by Labourwould be enough to reopen the centres and restore their services.

But it is not just about securing more funds. We also need communities get much more involved in tackling some of these deep-seated problems and helping to strengthen society.

We saw that with the fantastic way the community rallied around to provide food, support and practical help in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire and filled gap left by the local authority.

There are also established schemes that do an excellent job in the community like the Near Neighbours programme which has helped more than one million people.

The scheme – which encourages people of different faiths to work together - uses small grants to strengthen local communities, build support and trust and break down obstacles that stand in the way of better community relations.

In south London, there is a great example of a community project that is continuing to grow and bring people together. A few gardening enthusiasts turned a waste site on Clapham Common into a thriving community garden. From a humble start, the Bandstand Beds Association is now Clapham’s biggest food growing project.

But we also need to see more help from central government to improve community cohesion by reversing some spending cuts.

Teenagers are particularly hard hit after the government scrapped the educational maintenance allowance in 2011, cut the youth services budget by almost £400m since 2010 and hiked tuition fees.

When it comes to crime, young people from ethnic minorities are disproportionately victims of knife attacks. But the police struggle to deal with the problem after years of budget cuts.

There is no easy solution. I have been involved with charities in London that are trying to halt the epidemic of knife crime. We have seen volunteers team up with police to search for hidden knives and other weapons.

But there is only so much that volunteers can do. The promise from Labour of 10,000 extra police would make our neighbourhoods safer.

The money pledged by Labour to abolish the student tuition fees that cripple the finances of so many young people would help reduce the intergenerational wealth gap between the young and old.

And, those EU citizens worried about their place in the UK would be reassured by Labour’s guarantee that all EU nationals currently living in the UK will see no change in their legal status due to Brexit.

All these measures would help. But we still need to do more to strengthen our society.

That includes the Muslim community in Britain – the vast majority of whom are, like me, rightly proud of their British identity. From their ranks have come doctors, nurses, teachers and businessmen that have done their part in to improve our society.

There are multiple other examples and there is much to celebrate when it comes to the contributions of multiculturalism – despite the threat posed by those who want to attack us for our tolerance.

In my case, it was the proud moment my staff and I at Troia restaurant gave meals, help and a hospitable environment to the emergency services after the Westminster attack in March.

Against all the efforts to divide us, we need to work together to strengthen the pillars of our society. It will help make Britain a happy, safer and more prosperous place.

Relieving tensions in our society means more than just anti-terrorism strategy – it means a government ready to make real reforms across the country.

The appalling terrorist attacks on Manchester and London left us all facing a host of important questions.

There are the obvious ones such as who or what inspired the killers to commit such horrendous crimes and how can the police and security services prevent future outrages. But there are also questions that we need to ask ourselves about how we can strengthen the fabric of our society to make Britain a safer, more inclusive and more united place.

At present, that fabric is not torn apart, but it is badly damaged. As well as the terror attacks, there are some very different factors that have increased levels of distrust in our community.

There was last year’s European Union referendum that saw the nation split over Brexit and more recently, the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower that left many rightly furious with the slow response of Kensington and Chelsea council.

Those that are seeking to divide us try to capitalise on that distrust to spread their own brand of discontent.

The worst elements of those divisive forces are contained in Islamic State which has the capability to inspire terrorist atrocities across the world. Britain remains at risk from so-called jihadis – fighters who have returned from Syria, Iraq and Libya, often with technical and military expertise they could use to harm us.

Despite its poisonous ideology, Isis has managed to offer its sympathisers an outlet to express their grievances. It has been able to tap into those grievances and the aspirations of its followers with its sophisticated propaganda and skilled use of social media.

Isis will, however, not win and is losing the war on all fronts. Their so-called caliphate is on the edge of collapse after the defeat of Isis in Mosul. But we cannot rely with certainty on their total defeat just because they are being beaten in their strongholds. There is always the risk they will try to rebuild and return to commit fresh crimes.

While our communities came together after the attacks on Manchester and London to prove that terrorists cannot divide us, we need to do far more to strengthen our society and make us even more resilient.

That includes the Muslim community in Britain – the vast majority of whom are rightly proud of their British identity. From their ranks have come thousands of selfless doctors, nurses, teachers and businessmen that have each done their part in making our society stronger and more prosperous.

There are multiple other examples and there is plenty to celebrate when it comes to the contributions of multiculturalism. In my own case, it was the proud moment for my staff and I at Troia restaurant when we gave meals, assistance and a warm and hospitable environment to the emergency services in the aftermath of the Westminster attack in March.

However, we must all do more. There needs to be a national debate on what not just the Muslim community, but all communities can do to repair our society and strengthen the bonds between us.

I believe that a crucial part of that change is fighting to get a Labour government elected to give us the stronger and fairer society that we all need and deserve.

Since coming to power, the Tories have axed more than a million public sector jobs; our nurses, emergency services and police have been denied the pay rises they deserve. Cuts to police budgets have made us a less safe country, ill-equipped to meet the challenges of crime and terrorism in the 21st century.

Labour will also address the increasing social inequality that has forced record numbers of people into poverty and help young people left disillusioned and disaffected by the Tories.

A Labour government would offer us a chance to heal and rebuild our society. In the face of all the attempts to divide us, the most powerful message we can send is that we will work together to build a better society for all. Against fear and hatred, the British public’s quiet optimism remains our greatest strength.

On Tuesday, British Gas announced they would be raising electricity prices by 12.5 per cent from 15th September, adding £76 on average to the annual standard dual fuel bill. The move will hit over three million customers in the UK.

The announcement comes at a time when the wholesale price of electricity is falling and inflation is almost 10 per cent below the price rise. To the raised eyebrows of consumer experts, British Gas has cited government policy and increasing network costs as factors in the hike.

Centrica, British Gas’s parent company, posted profits of £816m in the first half of 2017 despite having lost thousands of customers. Meanwhile, chief executive Iain Conn received a fat-cat pay rise of £1m last year.

The energy giant is just the latest of the Big Six energy companies to hike prices in recent months, with NPower increasing their bills most sharply at 15 per cent in March. There are now fears of a fresh round of price hikes from rival suppliers in the winter.

All of this points to a broken energy system under the Tories. What makes matters worse is the fact that they seemed to recognise the problems themselves during the general election campaign – yet now they dither and delay, failing to act decisively.

Labour’s shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead has said “at the very least, the Conservatives should institute the energy price cap which Theresa May promised during the campaign”, highlighting how the government has failed to get a grip on the broken energy market despite their pledges.

At a time when wages are stagnating, services are being cut and ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet, that massive companies are making obscene profits at the expense of the ripped-off British public is simply unacceptable. Even more unacceptable is the sight of a weak government with the wrong priorities, walking by on the other side and doing nothing to help the people.

In 2015, the Tories scoffed at Ed Miliband’s suggestion that the government should intervene in the energy market to bring down costs. Just two years later and this government of chameleons adopted Miliband’s interventionist language at the 2017 general election, speaking of unfairness in the system and promising to cap energy prices.

However, talk is cheap with the Tories. They are simply unable to keep their promises to the British people. First they u-turned, watering down their proposals, and now they fail to act with any decisiveness at all. Quite clearly, in 2017 the gulf between the Labour party’s ambitions on energy and Tory neglect is stark.

The energy regulator Ofgem is looking at measures such as boosting competition and creating a price cap for two million of the most vulnerable customers, but that means many of the British Gas customers on poor value tariffs alone would still be hit. The UK needs and deserves bolder thinking on energy.

At the general election, the Labour party put forward a radical, transformative plan to tackle the excesses of bloated energy companies and create a new system for the many, not the few.

Labour will invest in new publicly owned energy provision that is genuinely affordable and democratically accountable to the people. Only with a Labour government will the British people be free from the scourge of arbitrary price hikes from energy giants such as British Gas and NPower.

Given the Tories are unable to negotiate a better deal for British families with the energy companies, this latest energy debacle also begs the question: how and why can we expect them to negotiate a good deal for the British people with the twenty-seven members of European Union and the EU commission?

On energy as much as Europe, the Tories lack unity and vision while Labour looks more and more like a government in waiting, ready to confront the country’s major challenges.

Last week saw a spree of robberies in which five people were attacked with acid in less than 90 minutes. The barbaric nature of the incidents, in which the victims sustained possibly life-changing injuries, has brought the issue to the front of the national consciousness.

But, while the attacks seemed to be terrifyingly random, they overwhelmingly targeted delivery drivers in an attempt to steal their mopeds. Although the use of acid is a particularly horrifying development, this fits a pattern of petty criminals using gratuitous violence against some of the capital’s most vulnerable workers.

For some time now, gangs have been attacking delivery drivers with almost impunity, often leaving them deprived of their means to make a living and terrified of working at night, if not worse. In response, many of these drivers have felt compelled to set up their own networks through which they can broadcast in the event of an emergency.

This is simply not good enough. No-one in this country should have to go to work fearing for their safety. These workers are at the forefront of technological developments that are set to transform the economy and drive growth. This is inevitably changing how we work, but everyone still deserves the guarantees we would expect from any job, particularly a safe and secure working environment.

The government must therefore do more to make the streets of London safer. A clampdown on the sale of acids would be a good start, with particular restrictions necessary on purchases by under-18s.

This should be followed by the legislation proposed by Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham, and supported by Sadiq Khan, which would make carrying acid an offence similar to that of carrying a knife – essentially closing a loophole that criminals are using to avoid arrest.

But action on acid alone is not enough. The government’s response to the surge in knife crime in the capital was to toughen jail sentences, but to continue to cut back on police. This strategy, like the rest of the Conservative’s austerity program, has failed with damaging consequences. The last 12 months to March saw the largest rise in crime in England and Wales in more than a decade, with a 20 per cent spike in knife crime alone.

It is clearer than ever that we cannot make our cities safer just by locking people up for longer. This is why Diane Abbott is right to call for “a new approach” to tackling crime after the recent spate of acid attacks. A truly tough response requires investment in our police; giving them the resources they need to proactively tackle these issues. Prosecuting offenders after the event simply leaves it too late.

We must also ask ourselves how, as a society, we have reached a point where some of our young people are willing to inflict such pain on others in the pursuit of a few hundred pounds’ worth of stolen goods. Consecutive conservative governments have now presided over an unravelling at the edges of our social fabric. Without measures to restore pride and prosperity to our local communities then violence and criminality will continue to thrive.

The plight of our city’s delivery drivers has exposed issues that go right to the heart of the challenges facing this country. Radical steps are needed to ensure the drivers’ safety alongside that of everyone else living and working in London. Violent crime is a complex issue with few simple solutions. But good policing is built on strong communities. It is urgent that we invest in both.

Matthews Taylor’s report into employment practices was published as Theresa May seeks to relaunch her premiership but it will have done little to satisfy workers or employers.

While ambitious in its scope, the Taylor report focuses in particular on the issue of growing labour market flexibility and the effect this has had on pay and conditions. The proliferation of the so-called ‘gig economy’ means that people’s patterns of work are changing as new technology drives innovation. But legislation has been slow to reflect these changes, often leaving both businesses and their staff in a legal grey area.

At the heart of this is confusion over what constitutes an employee, a worker and a self-employed contractor. Unfortunately, the Taylor report has failed to provide clear recommendations for distinguishing these categories.

Instead, the review opted for a new definition of worker to include ‘dependent contractor’. These are said to be self-employed workers, whose conditions are significantly enough controlled by their employer and should be given greater benefits and rights, while not being considered a formal employee of the business.

For employers, the failure to offer a clarified legal distinction makes it even harder for them to ensure they are complying with the law and treating those they employ fairly. For small businesses in particular, negotiating employment law is already expensive and time consuming, and complicating the categorisation further risks adding to this burden.

For employees, the lack or clarification allows unscrupulous employers to continue to exploit loopholes. While flexible working undoubtedly benefits some, too often it has come at the cost of insecure work and low pay. The concept of ‘dependent contractor’ should be welcomed in so far as it aims to ensure some benefits for some of the most vulnerable parts of the workforce, but it does not go far enough.

The fact of the matter is that everyone would benefit from a simplified system under which all employees are given the same rights, no matter their relationship to their employer. This would cut red tape for employers, while ensuring that all employees are treated equally.

Chris Bryce, chief executive of the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (IPSE), said that “any changes to employment status should bring clarity and not add to the confusion surrounding how government treats the way people choose to work.”

These comments were echoed by Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, who argued that the Taylor report lacked “the serious programme the country urgently needs to ensure that once again work pays in this country”.

Ultimately, for all of its ambition, the Taylor report fails to tackle the fundamental question facing the economy: how can we ensure that we are at the forefront of creating the well paid and innovative jobs of the future? If we are to meet this challenge, the government must take the lead in investing in infrastructure, and working to ensure the development of a highly skilled work force. Only than the tension between flexibility and security be truly overcome.